Page 347 - leadership-experience-2008

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328 PART 4: THE LEADER AS A RELATIONSHIP BUILDER
class didn’t make as much difference as the fact that I looked different.” If the
10
standard of quality were based, for instance, on being white and male, anything
else would be seen as deficient. This dilemma is often difficult for white men to

understand because many of them are not intentionally racist and sexist. As one
observer points out, you would need to be non-white to understand what it is like
to have people assume a subordinate is your superior simply because he is white,
or to lose a sale after the customer sees you in person and fi nds out you’re not
Caucasian. 11
These attitudes are deeply rooted in our society as well as in our organiza-
tions. Sociologist William Bielby proposes that people have innate biases and, left
12
to their own devices, they will automatically discriminate. Unconscious bias
theory suggests that white males, for example, will inevitably slight women and
minorities because people unknowingly revert to stereotypes when making de-
cisions. Indeed, passive, and sometimes unconscious, bias is a bigger problem
than blatant discrimination in most organizations. Consider a recent report from
the National Bureau of Economic Research, entitled Are Greg and Emily More
Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?, which shows that employers often uncon-
sciously discriminate against job applicants based solely on the Afrocentric or
African-American–sounding names on their resume. In interviews prior to the re-
search, most human resource managers surveyed said they expected only a small

gap and some expected to find a pattern of reverse discrimination. The results
showed instead that white-sounding names got 50 percent more callbacks than
African-American–sounding names, even when skills and experi-
Action Memo
ence were equal. 13
It takes conscious leadership to change the status quo. Leaders
Take the quiz in Leader’s Self-Insight 11.2
can establish conditions that limit the degree of unconscious bias
to evaluate your personal degree of passive
that goes into hiring and promotion decisions. Corporations such
more diversity-aware.
bias and think about ways you can become
as BP and Becton Dickinson & Co. are now using tools to mea-
sure unconscious as well as conscious bias in their diversity training
programs. 14
Living Biculturally Research on differences between whites and African-
Americans has focused on issues of biculturalism and how it affects employees’
access to information, level of respect and appreciation, and relation to superi-
Biculturalism
Biculturalism ors and subordinates. Biculturalism can be defi ned as the sociocultural skills and
the sociocultural skills and attitudes used by racial minorities as they move back and forth between the
the sociocultural skills and
attitudes used by racial
attitudes used by racial 15
minorities as they move back
minorities as they move back dominant culture and their own ethnic or racial culture. More than 90 years
and forth between the dominant ago, W. E. B. DuBois referred to this as a “double-consciousness. . . . One always
and forth between the dominant
culture and their own ethnic or
culture and their own ethnic or feels his twoness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unrec-
racial culture
racial culture
onciled strivings. . . .” In general, African-Americans feel less accepted in their
16
organizations, perceive themselves to have less discretion on their jobs, receive
lower ratings on job performance, experience lower levels of job satisfaction,
and reach career plateaus earlier than whites.
Eula Adams, head of card operations for First Data, recalls the feeling of
loneliness that can come from living biculturally. Adams began his career in
1972 at Touche Ross, the accounting fi rm that is today known as Deloitte &
Touche, and became the fi rm’s fi rst African-American partner in 1983. “The
loneliness, especially in the early days, was the hardest,” Adams now says.
“I lived in two worlds. I’d leave work and go home to one world and then
wake up and go back to work in that other world.” Glenn D. Capel, the only
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African-American fi nancial adviser in a Merrill Lynch offi ce in Greensboro,
North Carolina, knows the feeling well. Despite the fact that Merrill Lynch is